Preface

Imagine you are in a submarine, submerged miles below the surface surrounded by dark, freezing water. The hull of the submarine is under constant immense pressure from all directions. A single mistake in the design, construction or operation of the submarine spells disaster for it and its entire crew.

This is analogous to the challenge Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and their teams face today. Their organizations are surrounded on the internet by attackers that are constantly probing for ways to penetrate and compromise their organization's IT infrastructure. The people in their organizations receive wave after wave of social engineering attacks designed to trick them into making poor trust decisions that will undermine the controls that their security teams have implemented. The specters of ransomware and data breaches continue to haunt CISOs, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) of the most sophisticated organizations in the world.

After conducting hundreds of incident response investigations and publishing thousands of pages of threat intelligence, I have had the opportunity to learn from and advise literally thousands of businesses and public sector organizations all over the world. I wrote this book to share some of the insights and lessons I've learned during this extraordinary journey.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are my own and not those of my past or present employers.